Profile: Stephen Stich

Honorary Professor

Stephen Stich joined the department in February 2005 as an Honorary Professor. He holds a Board of Governors Professorship in Philosophy and Cognitive Science at Rutgers University, USA. He has been involved with the Hang Seng Centre for Cognitive Studies at Sheffield for many years, and is a core group member and member of the Organizing Committee for the AHRC Culture and the Mind Project. He will continue to visit Sheffield on a regular basis.

Stephen's main philosophical interests are in the philosphy of mind, epistemology, the philosophy of biology and moral psychology. In recent years, he has been involved in projects exploring the extent to which philosophically important intuitions vary form one culture to another (They vary alot!). He has also taken an active role in organizing a multi-disciplinary project aimed at understanding the psycholigical mechanisms underlying the acquisition and implementation of moral norms. The group working on that project includes philsophers, anthropologists and psychologist. It has undertaken empirical studies on moral judgement both within Western culture and cross-culturally, and has worked on theories htat attempt to explain the biological and cultural influences on the evolution of morality. The moral psychology project has also led to a series of papers exploring the implications of these findings for debates in moral philosophy.

NEWS: Stephen will be a Leverhulme Visiting Professor in the department from March through May 2009, and will be teaching a graduate course on Experimental Philosophy during this period. He will also be giving a series of four Leverhulme Lectures on Moral Psychology.

Selected Publications:

Books:

• Mindreading (co-authored with Shaun Nichols), Oxford University Press, 2003
• Deconstructing the Mind, Oxford University Press, 1996
• The Fragmentation of Reason: Preface to a Pragmatic Theory of Cognitive Evaluation, MIT Press, 1990
• From Folk Pschology to Cognitive Science: The Case Against Belief, MIT Press, 1983

Anthologies:

• Peter Carruthers, Stephen Laurence, & Stephen Stich, eds., The Innate Mind: Structure and Content, New York: Oxford University Press, 2005.
  
• Ted A. Warfield & Stephen Stich, eds., The Blackwell Guide to Philosophy of Mind, Basil Blackwell, 2003
• Peter Carruthers, Stephen Stich & Michael Siegal, eds; The Cognitive Basis of Science, Cambridge University Press, 2002
• Adam Morton & Stephen P Stich, eds., Benacerraf and his Critics, Basil Blackwell), 1996
  

Articles:

• Chandra Sripada & Stephen Stich, A Framework for the Psychology of Norms, to appear in P Carruthers, S Laurence & S. Stich, eds., Innateness and the Structure of the Mind, Vol. 2 (New York: Oxford University Press.)
• John Doris & Stephen Stich As a Matter of Fact: Empirical Perspectives on Ethics, to appear in F. Jackson and M. Smith, eds., The Oxford Handbook of Contemporary Analytic Philosophy.
• Shaun Nichols & Stephen Stich, Reading One's Own Mind: Self Awareness and Developmental Psychology to appear in Working Through Thought, ed. by R Kukla, R Manning & R Stainton (Boulder, CO: Westview Press)
• Chandra Sripada & Stephen Stich, Evolution, Culture and the Irrationality of the Emotions in D Evans & P Cruse, eds., Emotion, Evolution & Rationality (Oxford University Press) 2004. Pp 133-158.
• Shaun Nichols, Stephen Stich & Jonathan Weinberg, Meta-Skepticism: Meditations in Ethno-Epistemology, in S. Luper, ed., The Skeptics (Aldershot, U.K.: Ashgate Publishing) 2003. Pp. 227-247.
• Richard Samuels & Stephen Stich, Rationality & Psychology in Alfred Mele & Piers Rawling, eds., The Oxford Handbook of Rationality. Oxford Reference Libriary. (Oxford: Oxford University Press) 2004. Pp 279-300
• Edouard Machery, Ron Mallon, Shaun Nichols & Stephen Stich, Semantics, Cross-Cultural Style, Cognition, 92, 2004. Pp. B1-B12
• Richard Samuels, Stephen Stich & Luc Faucher, Reason and Rationality, Handbook of Epistemology ed. by I Niiniluoto, M Sintonen, & J Wolenski (Dordrecht:Kluwer) 2004. Pp. 131-179
• Stephen Stich & Shaun Nichols, Folk Psychology, in Stephen Stich & Ted A. Warfield, eds., The Blackwell Guide to Philosophy of Mind, (Oxford: Basil Blackwell) 2003. Pp. 235-255
• Stephen Stich & Jonathan Weinberg Jackson’s Empirical Assumptions, Philosophy and Phenomenoligical Research, 62, 3 May 2001. Pp. 637-643
• Jonathan Weinberg, Shaun Nichols & Stephen Stich, Normativity & Epistemic Intuitions Philosophical Topics, 29, 1&2, 2001. Pp. 429-460

Contact:

email : S.Stich@sheffield.ac.uk